Books with strong genre elements that are accessible to mainstream readers, focusing on fun, smart, and weird stories with a strong theme or big idea.
Lauren Bajek is a literary agent at Liza Dawson Associates who represents adult genre and speculative fiction with crossover appeal to mainstream readers, as well as select mysteries, romances with speculative elements, and adult nonfiction. She is drawn to smart, fun, and thematically-driven work that blends genres and features strong grounding in fact or niche expertise.
Submissions should be emailed to [email protected] I ask for a query letter and first three chapters (or 25 pages) pasted into the body of an email. Please check the agency website to see whether I am open to unsolicited queries. Liza Dawson Associates is a "one at a time" agency, so if you have an open query with one of my colleagues, please do not query me until they respond. Please query only one book at a time. I respond to all queries (with the caveats below), and my target response time is six weeks. Feel free to nudge me after that time. I do not respond to: - Queries in genres I don't represent - Queries sent by someone other than the author (unless there are extenuating circumstances such as incarceration) - Queries where I am on CC or BCC with other agents - Authors who send the same query over and over I rarely respond to requests for reasons why I passed on a project– if you received a form response, it's probably because I didn't have anything useful to say.
Last verified: March 5, 2026
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